Rod

Shew it's been awhile since I last posted...but after about twenty user names and password combinations I finally got back in. Anyway after lurking on and off for the last year or so I thought I would add my two cents to this one. Obviously I feel this is an important issue. For me getting to the battle is half the battle and half the fun. I would like to see the ability to plot "master" paths and then attach units too it. The path would stay there until deleted and units would automatically try to work their way to it via the easiest or plotted route. Once they get to it (no matter where along the route) they would try to follow it to the best of their ability. If distracted by fire they would return to it at the earliest convenience. Once they get to the end they would stop unless another command is given. Maybe it could even be smart enough to maintain a certain separation between units. If one gets to the end the others would go until the min separation from the unit ahead is achieved. Anyway this is probably too late in the process but maybe somewhere down the road it or something similar could be implemented. (What pun I see no pun)

Kman or others, Just curious but is there a way to play back the movies with FOW turned off. I know it might be subject to abuse but it would be a cool feature to have. Maybe it could be password protected or something or only available when the battle is over. Just food for thought. Rod

Vomitmeister, Yep your right not knowing Ambush I took it that Ambush being a computer game was closer to ASL the boardgame. My bad. Still doesn't excuse the fact that they apparently have not even reviewed CM. Thanks for clearing that up.

Just read the review for Squad Leader on the PCGamer website. They gave it a miss rating which is fine but along the right side of the review theres a little snippet under "SL Inspired by Victory not Avalon" in which they state that the closet game to ASL the boardgame is Ambush by Victory Games. Whats up with these guys. I went to their review section and they don't even have a review of CM listed. I'm not one to stuff a ballot box or anything but these guys might be long overdue for an email barrage.

Saw this article at Gamesdomain which brought me back to this thread which I had previously skipped. Read and judge for yourself. http://www.gamesdomain.co.uk/news/3593.html

Bruno and Four Stringer, Can't remember the whole history or chain of events but you might be interested to know that CM was actually going to be Computer Squad Leader at one time. Bigtime was developing it for Avalon Hill but broke away just before the Hasbro takeover. I believe thats it in a nut shell but its been awhile so the facts are getting a little fuzzy. All I can say is I'm glad it worked out as well as it did. Rod

I just had a M8 take out a hull down tiger with just one shot. My jaw just dropped. Thought I was doomed but then my Puma took out the M8 and a sherman 105 to quickly even the odds again. Oh my Tiger did manage to take out a jeep before dying.

Yep Doug, I think weather and time of day have random settings IIRC. But that is all. I forsee being able to hit a button and your done. With maybe the option of selecting your troops. The type of map, quality and make up of enemy troops would all be hidden from you. Maybe I'm just lazy but I think it would be fun.

BTS - Would it be possible to add a Random Quick Battle Generator. Whenever I build a quick battle I seem to gravitate towards the same scenario. I.e. combined arms, village, moderate hills, moderate tree coverage. I suppose I could do this by rolling some dice or something but I would still know what I was basically up against such as combined arms, mechanized, infantry ect... I know your busy but hopefully this could make it on the short, easy to do, hey why not I'm tired of tweaking the penetration factor of the HG42 during a rainstorm and need a break list.

When are you going to do the "Battle for Mount Kato"?

Heres my take on the Flight Sim front. I feel that they've really taken flight sims as far as they can with the current model. I've played pretty much all the new ones including Falcon 4 and Fly as well as EAW and WWII fighters. All the flight models and scenery are top notch. However, pretty soon they will be photo realistic then what. The problem I have with all flight sims is situational awareness and communicating with other planes or players in multiplayer. You are really handicapped by being confined to looking at a small screen to represent a three dimensional very dynamic environment. Many attempts have been made to ease this with various padlock modes, but to me they just come up short and take many hours of practice to master. I feel that a only a virtual reality system can advance the status of flight sims now. In fact I see no reason to buy another flight sim until something to that effect happens. I would be happy with Chuck Yeager graphics in a VR system. However I don't see any progress in this area and probably won't since most effort is aimed at more and more eyecandy.

Quango- First off welcome to the CM world. Here is another point about the turnbased system. I apologize if it was already been mentioned. I just skimmed through most of the posts because, frankly, these issues have been discussed to death over the last couple of years. But anyway CM has brought a resurgence of the PBEM system. People for months now have played against each other on all sides of the world. Obviously the time differences would probably keep them from playing live(once the tcp/ip is operational). Realtime would kill the PBEM functionality. Not something to take lightly. IMHO Microsoft or someone else will probably attempt to make a realtime Combat Mission, but it will ultimately pale in comparison in scope and depth.

David, I think thats an issue no matter what. You have to get your troops to the fighting as fast as you can. This means using roads. Sure you are vulnerable. In fact that did happen in the example I gave above. A few mortor rounds fell and my guys scattered. But then I had to go through the monotonous task of resetting up paths for over a company of men and support teams. I had no real choice, they had to get across the bridge. With the suggested system you could, once the waypoints are set, easily make minor adjustments to waypoints or even add pauses to keep your guys spread out.

I'll second that. I had a scenario where my reinforcements had to navigate down a long road and then cross a single bridge. It turned into a big pain(relatively speaking) keeping units in any kind of cohesion. It would be nice to just copy a set of waypoints to the members in command. As it works now I rarely use the multiselect command since its only really good for short distances. Which in my opinion is just as easily accomplished by giving individual commands to your units. Hopefully this makes the list.

Zaffod, Just to answer your 2d or 3d question. All the soldiers displayed, both dead and alive, are fully 3d.

Here the link to CGW but I didn't see the review. Probably just in the magazine for now. http://www.gamespot.com/cgw/index.html On a another note they are having a top 40 vote. So mobilize the forces and get to the polls. http://www.gamespot.com/promos/cgwtop40/index.html

David, I have no doubt that your new system will smoke. Rambus has its benefits and can be quite fast at certain tasks, sdram at others. Its more of a price to performance issue. In a couple of months things should open up more for sdram, but in the meantime choices are limited thanks to Intel. As far as making a mistake I wouldn't worry about it. Two months of playing CM on your new computer while the dust settles is worth it.

Supertanker and others interested, Came across this article which discusses the state of memory at the moment. It really seems like those Rambus guys are a bunch of weasels. If they get their way we will all be paying more for memory. But it looks like there is hope. http://www.tomshardware.com/column/00q3/000719/index.html

Any relation to Nathan Arizona? I could use a discount on some unpainted furniture.

Supertanker, I hadn't heard about the royalty thing with sdram. Makes you really hate Rambus. The via chipsets are definately an option but they are I believe due out with a better one also. Its sad that a two year old chipset (440Bx) is still probably the best performer. Reminds me of the time Coke tried to change its formula. Those guys aren't working at Intel now are they?

Just my two cents worth here. Its kind of a crappy time to buy a computer (especially if you are looking for upgradibility). This is because we are kind of in a transition period. This is because of the chipset situation. Right now there are no good chipsets for the PIIIs. This is mostly due to Intel and there stock in rambus memory. Intels i820 and i840 chipsets designed for the PIII only use expensive rambus memory as opposed to more popular sdram. Actually the best chipset for the PIII and celerons is the venerable 440bx chipset but it has to be overclocked to run 133Mhz FSB and PC133 sdram and has the effect of running the agp port out of spec, which can crash some video cards. Intel recently backed off there stance on Rambus and have released a new chipset, the i815 which has a 133Mhz FSB and supports sdram. Unfortunely intel has no plans to widely distribute this chipset. I've always been a supporter of Intel but IMHO they really dropped the ball. For the first time I am seriously considering buying a AMD for a computer I'm building for my brother-in-law. Its looking like the duron to thunderbird is the best upgrade route. The durons reportedly smoke the celeron and will be fully compatible with thunderbird chips. Now the problem with the Duron and Thunderbird chips are relatively new and a adequate chipset is still not widely availiable. But they will support sdram and apparently the new improved DDR sdram. Its looks like things will be a little clearer in a couple of months if you can wait. Easier said then done. Check out http://www.tomshardware.com if you get the chance.

Moon, Just finished it and it was definately Hell. Managed a Tactical Victory but it really didn't feel like I won anything. Pretty brutal. Need to learn patience, too much wagon before the horse tactics for me. TeAcH, no offense but isn't the scenario section for discussing the specifics of certain scenarios. I feel this was more of a general game design issue. Anyway good luck with your scenarios, looking forward to playing them all.

Another possibility - Maybe the line of site considers the fact that units take up an area and not just the center reference point ie dispersed infantry or just the side of tank . So if you could see any part of that area it figures you have LOS to it, just not a very good shot. But what do I know. Don't answer that.

Here is a bit of friendly advise for scenario designers. When you have reinforcements arrive please make sure that there are no cutoff open spaces in the set up area. I recently had a tank get placed in an open space completely surrounded by tall pines. What made this so devastating was the fact that my mission was to exit the tank off the far end of the map. (Sound familiar Moon-Awesome scenarios by the way) BTS would it be possible to change the way reinforcements enter. Maybe when they arrive the game pauses so you could place them similar to the initial set up. I know its been discussed before I can't remember what tecnical issues this entailed.

Hi guys, I played a quick random generated battle last night that basically turned into an artillery duel. It was set in fog with moderate hills and low tree cover and a village on one end. I had 2 60mm mortars and an 81mm spotter. The Germans had two 81mm spotters. After an initial long range tank duel between my two tank destroyers and a Tiger(turned out to be a Panzer IV at the end of the game) I moved a platoon up a valley to some trees at the end. I thought I was out of LOS but about half way a barrage came down. Two of my squads routed forward to the trees while the other squad and the HQ headed back down the valley. I sent a jeep to go round up my leader but it was knocked out by a near miss. This effectively killed my initial probe and left two of my squads broken close to the german MLR and out of CC. Luckily my surviving TD was able to provide cover while I regrouped. I took some casualties but the biggest effect was it screwed up my master plan. This platoon was later caught in another nasty barrage in some woods but survived to the end with around 50% casualties. After this I sent my remaining 2 platoons around the left side to try to get into the town. They ran into some dug in infantry and were stopped dead. I had my two mortars with me and melted the tubes down trying to displace these guys. I did manage to keep their heads down but they wouldn't budge until I was able to move up my infantry to engage in close combat. Finally I had the Germans on the run with a HMG in a house as their only strong point and it was keeping me pinned down. I called in my 81mm and pounded the house for about 4 turns. Only a couple of times did he get pinned. Finally the house collapsed when I added the TD to the barrage. Only after the HMG pulled out did I finally cut him down and the Germans surrendered. The moral of the story is this game is awesome, duh . As far as the lower calibre barrages I think they are about right from a game playing standpoint, if used correctly. I guess if you are expecting incoming artillery keep it in mind. Have escape plans,stay out of(or don't stay long in) obvious barrage terrain and keep your troops spaced apart. Then you'll be relatively ok. Also remember we're talking about half hour to hour time periods. If you took a heavy gauge barrage I could easily see you taking an hour to regroup into an effective fighting force again. As far as reality the closest I've been to a mortar is shooting tennis balls out of a tin can cannon.(Probably get arrested for that these days)